1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to sprinklers, particularly moving discharge sprinklers, and more particularly to moving discharge sprinklers having moving deflectors.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Commercial and residential water sprinklers may be generally classified as either fixed or moving discharge sprinklers. A typical fixed discharge sprinkler has a stationary sprayhead which directs either a number of discrete diverging streams of water, or a continuous fan spray of water spreading outwardly from the sprayhead over a fixed angle which may range from a few degrees to 360.degree., depending on the area desired to be sprayed. A moving discharge sprinkler, on the other hand, has a movable sprayhead, which directs one or more water streams outwardly from a nozzle assembly which is driven in a rotary, oscillatory, or other cyclic motion to cause the water streams to sweep over the area to be covered.
In my U.S. Pat. No. 2,909,325, I disclosed a moving discharge sprinkler system wherein sprinkler heads of the pop-up type are utilized. In that system, a small water turbine wheel rotating at relatively high speed causes rotation of the sprinkler nozzle assembly. In my U.S. Pat. No. 3,854,664, I disclose an improvement of my previous patent which provides for a transmission system for transmitting rotation from the turbine wheels to the nozzle assembly.
In many moving discharge sprinklers, a plurality of nozzles has been required to obtain a satisfactory radial coverage of the spray area, but with a concommitant undesired increase in the precipitation rate.
In other moving discharge sprinklers, single nozzle assemblies have been employed with deflector means used to breakup the single fluid stream. In these moving discharge sprinklers, the deflector means and the nozzle assembly have each been separately driven by gear connections to the transmission. This has resulted in quite complex gear assemblies. In addition, it is especially important to ensure that the intermittent deflector means and the nozzle assembly rotate at different angular velocities so that the fluid stream will not remain in the same position relative to the rotating deflector means. This also has necessitated complex gear mechanisms.
It is therefore the primary object of this invention to provide a stream rotor sprinkler having a stream discharging nozzle assembly and a rotating intermittent deflector means which is not directly operated by the motor transmission so as to provide a simpler operating stream rotor sprinkler.
Another object of this invention is to provide a stream rotor sprinkler having a rotating nozzle assembly, and a rotating deflector which is driven by the rotating nozzle assembly.
Yet another object of this invention is to provide a stream rotor sprinkler having a rotating nozzle assembly and a rotating deflector which rotate at different angular velocities.
Still another object of this invention is to provide a stream rotor sprinkler having a deflector means so as to provide substantially uniform circumferential fluid coverage.
Further objects of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the description of the invention found hereinafter.